


ash yams

by caermit67



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Banter, Gen, M/M, Major Character Injury, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22633660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caermit67/pseuds/caermit67
Summary: Miraak does not die in apocrypha. He cannot fathom why that would be.(aka the one where an inexperienced spellblade dovahkiin frees Miraak's eternal soul and makes him some soup after)
Relationships: pre-Male Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Miraak
Comments: 5
Kudos: 141





	ash yams

Miraak grits his teeth from the pain, and though it will be the last pain he feels, it is still the embarrassment that agonizes him as he is suspended in the sky of apocrypha. There is a tentacle through him. He has read every book, scroll, tome or text, and yet this sensation is delightfully new. It’s particularly sinister, for the Daedric Prince to twist such a wish.

The Last Dragonborn has defeated him. A human man, not quite nordic, nor breton, nor redguard, nor imperial, hiding behind a similar mask to Miraak’s own, Zahkriisos. Not particularly magically talented, seemingly a master of a novice healing spell and an intermediate alteration buff. Not particularly learned, still in the beginning stages of his hero’s journey, still under the tutelage of the Greybeards, those frauds. Not worthy, not yet. 

His last moment, it’s all spite. Bitter, bitter spite, that for all he’s worked for, all he knows, a strong sword arm and being Akatosh’s new favorite toy still earns the champion his happy ending. He will die without seeing the sun again, without tasting fresh air, without feeling hunger, or thirst, or the desire to sleep. 

With his last breath, he wishes such an end to this hero’s journey too. He’s read every book, both fiction and non, and he laughs at the thought that his own story might end with such a resounding disappointment. Everything he knows, all that he’s learned, gone. What a waste. 

He is suspended longer than he thought he’d be. Surely his soul would be devoured at some point. Hermaeus Mora would not be so patient to entrap his newest champion. 

He endeavours to stay conscious long enough to feel his soul being ripped from his body. The boneless limb impaling him is wrenched from his body without artistry, and he fails. 

\--

The Last Dragonborn stares down The Daedric Prince of Knowledge’s eldritch, grotesque form, and restates his threat one last time. 

“I have yet to lose Akatosh’s favor, and as such my soul will return to his side, unless I say otherwise. You have no unwilling claim over me. The knowledge that Miraak has in his head is mine, and the rest of the man who comes with it, if I am to be your champion.”

He can feel the air in apocrypha clench with rage, the very realm pulsing with seething anger. He’s aware he’s breaking the rules here, that this was not how the story was meant to play out, but he’d never really been much for reading. 

After an extended pause, the air seems to abate. “Very well,” the Prince coos, malice dripping tangibly from every syllable, “Consider this knowledge a gift, as my new Champion. But, you will serve me faithfully, for this trick. Miraak is yours, or, what you can save of him.” 

The eyes dissipate into the inky black sky of apocrypha, and The Last Dragonborn rushes for Miraak’s unconscious form. With the blessings of the nine, he might just be able to save his arch nemesis from an ill-befitting death. 

\--

Miraak wakes up in a bed, and gasps with pain. 

His stomach clenches with a multitude of tortures, sensations of wrenching and aching, a burning divide where his skin is pulled taut and swollen. His throat peels from the inside out, his mouth grainy and dry, nearly gag-inducing. His head pounds like the gods themselves are banging on his skull, and every muscle in his body cries with exhaustion. He breathes, and it’s a tremendous effort. 

And he breathes again, and it is a whole new shock to his senses. 

The air is light, so sharp to his nose it nearly makes him sneeze, and it startles him how cold and quickly the air fills his lungs. His lungs- they fill all the way, he can feel it. They are not weighed down by a demonic, daedric influence. 

He takes another sharp breath, and attempts to open his eyes. They are assaulted by brightness, and almost immediately he is attempting to sit up and finding himself too weak to accomplish this. He blinks at the ceiling, at the unfamiliar architecture, in an unfamiliar light. Tones of red, brown, yellow, even a little purple, warm colours bathe the shadowed roof of an incredibly un-daedric ceiling. 

His head beats louder, reminding him he is in pain, though he cannot discern why, or where he may be. This is not apocrypha, where his soul would be sent where it to be claimed by Hermeous Mora, as it rightly should be. It stretches even the most basic logic that there might be any place his soul would otherwise reasonably be. 

While he’s certain the Last Dragonborn’s sword had been enchanted with a more destructive encryption - the first electrifying hit had certainly thrown him off kilter, perhaps even having swayed the battle from the start, leading to his truly embarrassing defeat - Miraak realises he cannot rule out the possibility that his soul has been sent to the Soul Cairn. While the texts that describe such a place use words like “barren wastes” and “inhospitable”, he supposes there is a possibility he has found his way into a particularly comfortable bed, far from Hermeous Mora’s reach. 

It is ridiculous to presume he may be in Sovngarde - Akatosh would not take him back after creating so many replacements after him, and if he were there, he would not be in the pain he was now. Though, in the privacy of his own head, he does engage the fantasy somewhat of the things he might shout at the Aedra, were he given the opportunity. Many years alone with nothing but his own thoughts had taught him well how to escape his reality in his own head, and the pounding sensation was only building the more he tried to perceive his surroundings. 

A sudden noise draws him out of his fantasy sharply, and his ears become aware of the other, smaller things he can hear over the thunderous roar of the pain splitting his head in two. A door had opened and then shut. There was conversation, now, between what could be two men. The floorboards above his head were creaking, he could hear the crackling of a fire in the room he was in. He strained his ears for more and found a faint humming, from a particularly potent enchantment. Somewhere, one of the men - the raspier voiced one - laughs. 

One of the men descends a staircase, headed towards him. Miraak lies still, and closes his eyes, affording himself some shred of dignity perhaps. 

“Are you awake yet?” The Last Dragonborn asks. 

Miraak stills, considerably shocked, and the Last Dragonborn must see this, because he murmurs something vaguely exacerbated, and descends on the First Dragonborn with a quickness.

His only warning is the noise of a satchel of considerable weight hitting the floor before the Last Dragonborn is kneeling by his side placing a hand - a head now, against his beating heart. 

“Can you move your fingers?” He is asked, rather desperately, and instead of reply he squeezes his eyes shut. He’s sure he could, but twitching a pinky for the man who…. well he’s not quite sure what’s been done to him, to be honest, but he’s not feeling great. He’s still quite bitter from the imaginary argument he’s had, and he’s decreed himself the master of his own fate. Taking orders while aching so prominently seems outright against his nature.

The Last Dragonborn waits patiently for ten breaths, raising his head from Miraak’s chest (which has been unclothed, he realizes, somewhat distantly, and is only covered by a thin sheet), and then asks again, to Miraak’s ears, quite condescendingly, “Twitch once if you can hear me?” 

Miraak huffs, and the false dragonborn seems to take it as an answer. 

“Alright. Hopefully you’re alive in there, and not completely mad.” Miraak huffs again at this, hating the tone of mocking comfort the hero adopts. “I’m no healer, all I know of restoration is combat magic, but the town alchemist gave me these potions, some time ago. They might ease the pain of your wound- I’m sorry about that by the way. Like I said, I’m really not much of a healer.” 

It’s silent for a second, as Miraak waits to be fed these mystery potions, too exhausted to protest further coddling at this point. The Last Dragonborn hesitates, and then clears his throat. 

“I’ll need to remove your mask, for that. I tried, believe me, but the latch wouldn’t release, I swear.” 

Miraak pauses himself, his chest suddenly void. This mask, he has tried to remove it many times, but under the domain of Hermeous Mora it was no longer his to control. Before that - and oh so long ago those days were - the mask would not release him until he had freed himself from the control of his dovah overlords. 

If the mask would not release to the Last Dragonborn, his soul then had not been devoured, and the realm in which he was existing may just be nirn. And the soul to which his mask may obey might just be his own. 

He raises a shaking hand, his weak appendage responding to the command with a slight delay, weighed down by the pull of exhaustion, and the clasp of Miraak’s mask releases with but a touch. The Last Dragonborn hesitates only a moment before gently tugging it from his face, pruned skin hitting the blast of foriegn air with a horrified shiver. 

Miraak’s mind explodes with sound. His mask is his. His soul is his. He’s free. He’s free. 

\--

The Last Dragonborn tries not to look at Miraak’s face, but he cannot help but take a moment of stunned silence. 

The man was once a nord, many lifetimes ago, but endless imprisonment in a particularly maddening plane of oblivion carved it’s uniqueness into the lines of the First Dragonborn’s features. Most noticeably and least surprisingly, as the hero had been forced to undress the man in order to tend to his giant gaping tentacle wound, his skin had taken on an eerie greenish hue, sickly pale and almost so soft it was fragile. 

His eyes were gaunt, not from malnutrition, but perhaps from boring into every page in every book that had ever been written. Tendrils of black influence blotted his veins, almost like tentacles, ensnaring his face. The hair he did have was grey, though time had not aged him, and missing in chunks on both his chin and scalp, patchy and distressed, matted to the man’s head and tangled from years without care. He was quite a sight, and the hero’s heart panged with pity once again. 

Even when he might come to regret this decision, he would not argue that it was not the only choice he could’ve made without disgracing himself in his own heart. 

Remembering his goal, the dragonborn touches Miraak’s chin with an extremely gentle hand, tilting the nord’s mouth open oh so carefully. He lifts the bottle of Ultimate Well-Being by the neck to trickly very slowly into Miraak’s open mouth, careful not to overwhelm him. What an embarrassment, to come so far just to drown the First Dragonborn in healing potion. Not an end befitting such a man. 

Miraak’s adam’s apple bobs as he works to swallow the trickle of elixir, and the wince of pain abates quickly as the magic sets in. He swallows again, face relaxed, and the dragonborn rushes to pour more in the sickly man’s mouth, now that swallowing is more of a guarantee than a hope.

“Take your time,” He reminds his fellow dragonborn, who’s hand raises to tilt the philter further and drink more greedily from the bottle. His greenish skin glows brightly, cords of golden light echoing through his bloodstream as small scrapes close instantly, and the puckered scar slicing open his midsection becomes a little less raised and reddened. His face gets some color back, noticeably, and the First Dragonborn blinks his eyes open to stare at the ceiling, cautiously at first, then more fully. The two dragonborns meet eyes, and the last of the two is immediately disheartened. 

Miraak’s eyes are completely blackened by daedric influence. 

He’s not sure what he expected. Perhaps a last, gleaming source of humanity, an unclaimed territory on the nord’s face. He can see, within the inky blackness, a clouded outline of an iris. It flickers as it focuses on the Last Dragonborn’s own eyes, and he wonders what they see. Miraak blinks another long, blink, clearing the film of sleep from his eyes, and appraises the hero with an air of tired disappointment. 

“What-” Miraak rasps, getting caught on his own parched throat, “What are you… doing to me.” 

The Last Dragonborn flickers his gaze away, laughing. He’d expected a question like this, but the phrasing still catches him off guard. “Saving your life,” He responds, frankly, looking back and maintaining eye contact with the ancient dragonborn below him. 

Miraak rolls his eyes at this response, and clarifies impatiently, “Yes, but why?” 

The hero pauses, and takes a second to consider his words, before replying. “I thought on what you said, during the battle.

“You said you knew things that the greybeards could never teach me. Obviously one of us had to fall, at the summit. But that didn’t necessarily mean your knowledge had to go to waste. I still have a destiny that needs to be fulfilled.” 

Miraak glares at him, processing these words for a moment or two. “You want me,” he says, quiet but deadly, “to help you defeat Alduin.” 

Maintaining eye contact, the Last Dragonborn nods. “Basically, yes.” 

Miraak’s head slumps back into the pillow, and shifts his gaze to the ceiling. After a long wait, he says, slowly, “Perhaps I will agree to this. First I must know where we are, and how you... escaped Hermeous Mora’s domain. With me.”

The Last Dragonborn sits back on his haunches and crosses his legs, shifting into a more comfortable seat as he replies, “We’re in Raven Rock, on Solstheim. This house was gifted to me by the Councilor, no one knows you’re here except Teldryn, upstairs, and he has no idea who you are.”

Miraak nods, and the dragonborn assumes he knows how much the people of Solsthiem must despise him for the damage he did during his attempted escape. No lives were lost, to his knowledge, but the mask was quite recognizable and the circumstances hard to explain. Needless to say they’d be getting back to the mainland as soon as possible, if it were up to the dragonborn. 

“I bargained - or, well,” the dragonborn admits, “I used my leverage as dragonborn to convince Herma Mora to let me take you. You were gravely injured though, I’m sure you remember, and as I’ve said I’m not a healer.”

“I’m aware.” Miraak replies, dryly. 

A spike of worry makes the dragonborn frown, “You slept for nearly two whole days, you’re probably hungry and thirsty.” He glances up to the stairs, he’s yet to smell dinner wafting down from the fireplace above, “Teldryn’ll have only just started the soup, but there’s bread and fruit, probably some dried meat if your stomach is strong enough. And you should be drinking water, but very slowly. I’ll get you some now.” 

Miraak doesn’t respond and the Last Dragonborn gets to his feet, staring blankly at the ceiling, deep in thought. “Is…” the dragonborn asks, “is… that alright with you?” 

“....” Miraak opens and closes his mouth, lost for words. “Am I…. hungry? Is that what this is?” 

He hesitates. “Probably?”

The hero flinches when Miraak laughs, a single bark of hysterical laughter, and slowly he digs his elbows into the bedrame and flexes to dreg up enough strength to sit somewhat upright in the dragonborn’s bed. 

“Very well then,” he commands, voice still rasping with thirst, closing his eyes to rest, “Bring me my first meal on nirn again. I have no preference for flavor yet, though I withhold the right to judgement.” 

The Last Dragonborn grins somewhat hesitantly, as if waiting to be told the punchline. “Do you want to start with apples, or ash yams?” He asks, unable to keep the laugh out of his question. 

“I’ve read fewer sonnets about the taste of a yam, so I will venture for apple as the safer bet.”

**Author's Note:**

> im gonna start posting all the tidbits i have lying around cus i have over 100 documents and i need to stop opening new ones ffs.


End file.
